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Social media health trends are ‘putting women’s lives at risk’, warn experts
Experts have raised concerns over the rise of ‘concerning’ health trends on TikTok and Instagram
Wellness trends are putting women’s lives at risk, experts have said, amid warnings that a growing number of young people are turning to social media for health advice.
Inaccurate health information and hacks like the “period cancelling craze”, which encourages women to consume a combination of jelly powder, lemon juice and ibuprofen to reduce menstrual flow, have taken social media by storm.
There has been an increase in content posted on TikTok and Instagram discussing the alleged dangers of birth control and more and more content creators are sharing their experiences with natural contraceptive methods.
While speaking publicly about certain concerns can help destigmatise taboo women’s health issues, experts have warned that some social media health trends can do more harm than good.
“Social media does not put the health information in the proper context because it is set up for quick and flashy messages,” Georgie Kovacs, women’s health expert and founder of Fempower Health, told Femtech World.
“The algorithm appears to push content that is sensationalised and there is no way to separate influencers from clinicians.
“Even clinicians vary in their views. The ones who seem to be loudest get the most views and followers, but are they the ones keeping up with data? Are they subconsciously riding the wave of their big personality driving followers and likes and shares?”
Karolina Löfqvist, co-founder and CEO of Hormona, said social media trends typically lack any scientific backing, putting women at serious risk of making “ill-informed” decisions about their bodies.
“While influencer content can serve as useful reminders to women that they are not alone and many accounts are committed to sharing only verified information, social media has blurred the lines between expert and non-expert voices, making it harder to separate the truth from the lies.
“Platforms need to take responsibility for their users’ wellbeing by monitoring and flagging misleading or harmful health content that’s veiled as advice, and enforce stricter user guidelines to curb this growing spread of misinformation.”
Research shows young people are more likely to turn to their social media feeds for health advice, which means they are also more likely to discredit accurate health information. Dr Nitu Bajekal, senior OB/GYN and author of Finding Me in Menopause, is particularly worried about this.
“As a senior OB/GYN with nearly 40 years of clinical experience, I am concerned about the misinformation around hormonal contraception and the benefits of natural methods for contraception,” she explained.
“All these myths and misinformation are putting women’s lives at risk, especially because of the increased risk of an unplanned pregnancy. We know pregnancy can be a risky business for many.
“It also denies women with conditions that cause heavy or painful periods, such as endometriosis, adenomyosis, fibroids and PCOS, the chance to improve quality of life by being able to regulate their cycles with the pill.
It is all very well for women who are in stable relationships or situations where they can afford to do natural cycle methods or barrier methods with condoms. For the rest of the world, however, having access to effective and safe hormonal and non-hormonal contraceptives remains crucial.”
Hannah Westwood, PhD researcher in the Centre for Postdigital Cultures at Coventry University, said much of the content we see on social media about contraception contains false information, suggesting that hormonal contraceptives are dangerous.
“The promotion of natural contraceptives has risen alongside a backlash against hormonal methods like the pill, patch and injection,” Westwood told Femtech World.
“This trend is worrying because it is encouraging social media users to switch away from their existing hormonal contraceptive method even if it is working for them, to natural methods which may be less effective.
“Natural methods must be carried out properly if they are to work effectively, since conditions such as endometriosis and lifestyle factors such as drinking alcohol can reduce the effectiveness of some of these methods.”
While combating this spread of health misinformation online is difficult, Westwood said it is important that anyone making medical decisions based on information from social media consults a medical professional before making changes.
“Platforms such as Instagram and TikTok need to have more specific guidelines relating to the sharing of health information and take responsibility for addressing the spread of misinformation,” she also noted.
Jamie Norwood, co-founder of sexual health platform Stix, added: “When women don’t have the right information, they could potentially do something harmful to their bodies.
“Now, more than ever, access to medically credible, accurate, and non-judgemental educational content is critical. Sexual education systems are failing us, so women are left to navigate the internet rabbit hole for answers to their most pressing health questions.
“While these trends might seem harmless, we know that young people deserve factual information and tools to navigate their own health.”
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Pregnancy complications may leave women more vulnerable to the long-term heart effects of stress, a recent study suggests.
A study of more than 3,000 women in their first pregnancy found persistently higher stress levels were associated with higher blood pressure after pregnancy, specifically in women who had adverse pregnancy outcomes including preeclampsia, preterm birth, having a baby that was small for gestational age, meaning smaller than expected for that stage of pregnancy, or stillbirth.
Among women who experienced these complications, higher stress levels over time were associated with blood pressure that was 2 mm Hg higher than that of the low-stress group during the years two to seven after delivery.
This was not the case among women who did not experience adverse pregnancy outcomes.
Virginia Nuckols, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow in the University of Delaware’s department of kinesiology and applied physiology, said: “For women who were having babies for the first time and had complications, referred to as adverse pregnancy outcomes, we found that higher stress levels over time were associated with higher blood pressure levels 2-to-7 years after delivery.
“This suggests that women who had pregnancy complications may be more susceptible to the negative effects of stress on their heart health, and taking steps to manage and reduce stress could be important for protecting long-term heart health.”
The researchers analysed records of 3,322 first-time mothers aged 15 to 44 who did not have high blood pressure before pregnancy.
The women were enrolled at 17 medical centres in eight US states, were pregnant with one baby and were having their first child. According to the authors, 66 per cent of participants self-identified as white, 14 per cent as Hispanic and 11 per cent as Black.
Blood pressure and stress levels were measured during the first and third trimesters, and again two to seven years after delivery.
Stress was assessed using the Perceived Stress Scale, a standard questionnaire that asks how often people feel situations are uncontrollable, unpredictable or overwhelming.
Those who experienced moderate to high stress levels were often younger, between 25 and 27 years of age, had higher body mass index, a measure based on height and weight, and lower educational attainment.
The authors said it is not yet clear exactly how higher stress leads to higher blood pressure in women who had pregnancy complications, and that several factors are likely to be involved.
Nuckols added: “Future studies should examine why women with a history of adverse pregnancy outcomes may be more susceptible to stress-driven increases in blood pressure and test whether stress reduction interventions can actually lower cardiovascular risk for these women.”
High blood pressure during pregnancy can have lasting effects on maternal health, including preeclampsia, eclampsia, stroke or kidney problems, according to the American Heart Association’s 2025 guideline for the prevention, detection, evaluation and management of high blood pressure in adults.
Monitoring blood pressure before, during and after pregnancy is crucial to help prevent and reduce the risk of long-term complications.
Laxmi Mehta is chair of the American Heart Association’s Council on Clinical Cardiology and director of preventive cardiology and women’s cardiovascular health at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, and was not involved in the study.
Mehta said;’ “This study highlights the powerful connection between the mind and heart, emphasising the importance of stress management, particularly for those who have experienced adverse pregnancy outcomes.
“For the clinical care team, it reinforces the need to proactively assess and address stress as part of the comprehensive care we provide to our patients.
“Future research on whether targeted interventions to reduce or manage stress has a meaningful impact on long-term cardiovascular outcomes will be important as well.”
AI could help routine mammograms spot heart disease risk in women, as well as breast cancer, researchers have found.
A team from Emory University analysed regular screening scans from more than 123,000 women who had no prior history of cardiovascular disease.
Using an AI programme to quantify calcification and hardening in the arteries, they found women with severe cases had two to three times the risk of developing potentially fatal heart attacks, stroke and heart failure.
“This was true even in younger women under 50, a group often considered low-risk, and held up after accounting for other risk factors like diabetes and smoking,” said Hari Trivedi, Emory associate professor and co-director of the university’s Health Innovation and Translational Informatics lab, who described the research as the largest study of its kind.
“We wanted to test whether AI could use this to identify women at risk of cardiovascular disease at no extra cost or inconvenience.
“”For women, this means a mammogram you’re already having could also provide important information about your heart health, prompting a conversation with your doctor about preventive steps such as cholesterol testing or medication.”
The researchers’ work was published today in the European Heart Journal, from the European Society of Cardiology, which noted that women are largely underdiagnosed and undertreated for cardiovascular disease.
They wrote that the high resolution of routine mammograms could allow for essentially automatic, direct visualisation of the arterial beds within the breasts of nearly all adult women, with calcifications easy to detect and correlated with deposits found in other parts of the body.
The researchers said that, compared with imaging of the heart’s coronary arteries, where blockages narrow and impede the flow of oxygenated blood to the heart muscle, calcifications in breast tissue affect a separate layer of the vessel, resulting in increased artery stiffness, a measure typically linked to long-term hypertension.
They described the finding as an independent predictor of cardiovascular disease and a potentially useful addition to traditional cardiovascular risk factors.
In an accompanying editorial, Lori Daniels, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at the UC San Diego School of Medicine, said that while fewer than 40 per cent of women may know their cholesterol levels, many more are up to date with their breast cancer screening.
“Two-thirds of women aged 50-69 in the European Union reported a mammogram within the prior 2 years, and in the USA, nearly 70 per cent of women aged 45 years and older were up to date with mammography according to American Cancer Society screening guidelines,” Daniels wrote.
“Breast arterial calcification has the potential to reframe this mismatch, leveraging a widely adopted cancer-screening platform to identify cardiovascular risk in women who may not otherwise engage with prevention.”
A blood test for endometriosis showed clinical promise after detecting cases missed by standard imaging, according to a clinical validation study.
HerAnova Lifesciences has published a peer-reviewed clinical validation study of its HerResolve blood test for endometriosis in the Journal of Minimally Invasive Gynecology, the official journal of the AAGL.
The multi-centre study enrolled 298 women of reproductive age across 11 clinical sites in the US, Europe and Hong Kong.
The study population was 75.8 per cent white, 9.7 per cent Black, 9.1 per cent Asian and 5 per cent non-white Hispanic participants.
It found the test identified 61.5 per cent of histologically confirmed endometriosis cases that were missed by transvaginal ultrasound and or MRI scans.
All results were validated against the gold standard of laparoscopic findings with histopathological tissue confirmation.
The headline numbers were an AUC of 0.944, specificity of 97.5 per cent and sensitivity of 80 per cent. The high specificity was a deliberate design choice, with the model optimised to minimise false positives and reduce unnecessary invasive procedures. Performance was also consistent across menstrual phases.
The blood test, called HerResolve, is a multi-omic blood-based assay that combines three serum microRNA biomarkers, three protein biomarkers, one steroid hormone, patient age and BMI into a machine learning algorithm to detect endometriosis.
Farideh Bischoff, chief medical officer at HerAnova and corresponding author of the study, said: “Endometriosis has long been one of the most underdiagnosed and undertreated conditions in women’s health.
“HerResolve was designed to work alongside existing imaging and clinical evaluation, filling a critical gap in non-invasive disease detection.”
The test is currently available at select IVF and reproductive medicine centres across the US and is positioned as a triage tool, helping identify patients who may benefit from further evaluation or empirical treatment rather than replacing surgery entirely, but potentially reserving it for treatment rather than diagnosis.
A prospective validation study is underway in geographically and ethnically diverse populations, and HerAnova is also pursuing longitudinal analyses to evaluate whether the assay can monitor treatment response over time.
Endometriosis affects approximately one in 10 women of reproductive age, yet the average diagnostic delay remains six to 11 years.
The current gold standard, laparoscopic surgery, is invasive, dependent on surgeon skill and not without risk, making a reliable non-invasive alternative one of the most sought-after tools in women’s health diagnostics.
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